The Kobayashi Travel Fund was created to provide funding for the initiation of new research by subsidizing travel expenses. It may be used to consult archives, museums, or other sites that house primary materials, as well as for travel to acquire and develop research data.

The Kobayashi Travel Fund awardees for this round are:

Perin Gürel, assistant professor of American studies, for travel to Iran and Turkey for writing a chapter of her second book, America's Wife, America's Concubine: Turkey, Iran, and the Bounds of Middle Eastern Solidarity.

Nicole Woods, assistant professor of art history, for travel to California and New York for research entitled, “Utopian Dwellings: Land Art, Architecture, and Computer Programming in the 1970s.”

In discussing these awards, Hildegund Müller, Associate Vice President for Research and Associate Professor of Classics, said, “This year’s grant winners exemplify the wide range of possible research projects that may be funded by a flexible program like the Kobayashi Travel Fund. One of our awardees will visit Turkey and Iran to investigate how American popular culture has shaped cultural stereotypes in the Middle East, one will visit Paris to pursue research on an artist closely connected with the Congregation of the Holy Cross, and yet another is using the funds to acquire the research skills necessary for a pioneering study in neurobiology. It is a pleasure the see, yet again, the impact that travel funding can have on the broadening and deepening of our faculty’s research interests.”

The Library Acquisitions grant program is designed to provide University resources to fund library acquisitions in support of research, scholarship, and creative endeavor at the University of Notre Dame. This program is not meant to replace the normal means of enhancing the library’s collections but to provide a means of responding to unique opportunities or challenges. This award cycle, Xiaoshan Yang, associate professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures, has received a grant that will be used to purchase the Chinamaxx Digital Libraries, an ebook library of approximately 700,000 volumes consisting mostly of publications from the beginning of the People’s Republic of China through 2014.

“Through the Library Acquisitions Grant program, we have been able to acquire rare books, unique poets’ archives, and indispensable research literature. In recent years, the grant has increasingly been used to provide digital materials, either through the acquisition of ebook collections and databases or by funding digitizations of medieval manuscripts and threatened archival materials,” said Müller. “Thus, the Library Acquisitions Grant demonstrates the changes we see in Notre Dame’s libraries today and helps in making them unique.”

The Kobayashi Travel Fund accepts proposals once in the fall semester and again in the spring semester, while the Library Acquisitions Grant program opens the applications period in the fall. Notre Dame Research’s Internal Grants Program supports faculty researchers and programs with the goal of supporting faculty in delivering cutting-edge, globally significant research, scholarship, or creative endeavor that is a force for good in the world.

The University of Notre Dame is a private research and teaching university inspired by its Catholic mission. Located in South Bend, Indiana, its researchers are advancing human understanding through research, scholarship, education, and creative endeavor in order to be a repository for knowledge and a powerful means for doing good in the world. For more information, please see research.nd.edu or @UNDResearch.